Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so

much astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after

our arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project

those two shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went

on and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very

roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable

philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always

particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any

one. His great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate

admiration. He would sit for any length of time, with the utmost

enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of

luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in

admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing

object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake and found him

to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of

people.

Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and

with her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale

repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew

Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction

to my guardian in behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With

Mr. Gusher appeared Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby

gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too small for his

moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for

somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet he was

scarcely seated before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly,

whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was,

flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty—

and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of

brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts

among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so

clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale’s mission to be in ecstasies

with everybody else’s mission and that it was the most popular

mission of all.

Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his

heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but

that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where

benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a

regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap

notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,

servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of

one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to

help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster

and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were

down, he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr.

Quale by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr.

Quale), and when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the

subject to a meeting, including two charity schools of small boys

and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow’s mite, and

requested to come forward with halfpence and be acceptable

sacrifices, I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.

I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It

seemed to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and

carelessness were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with

such things, and were the more readily believed in since to find

one perfectly undesigning and candid man among many opposites could

not fail to give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr.

Skimpole divined this and was politic; I really never understood

him well enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly

was to the rest of the world.

He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we

had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his

usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.

Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were

often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he

was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view—in

his expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical

attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and

sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, “Now,

my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that

you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money—in my

expansive intentions—if you only knew it!” And really (he said)

he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as

doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which

mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor’s hand, he

would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he

substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant

it—if his will were genuine and real, which it was—it appeared to

him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.

“It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,”

said Mr. Skimpole, “but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable!

My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It’s a part of

the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature that he always

calls it a ‘little’ bill—to make the payment appear easy to both

of us. I reply to the butcher, ‘My good friend, if you knew it,

you are paid. You haven’t had the trouble of coming to ask for the

little bill. You are paid. I mean it.’”

“But, suppose,” said my guardian, laughing, “he had meant the meat

in the bill, instead of providing it?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise me. You take the

butcher’s position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very

ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen

pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a

pound, my honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the question.

‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’

says he, ‘I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!’ ‘My

good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like intellectual beings.

How could that be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I

have NOT got the money. You couldn’t really mean the lamb without

sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without

paying it!’ He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.”

“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired my guardian.

“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr. Skimpole. “But in that

he was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of

Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a

short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.”

“He is a great favourite with my girls,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “and I

have promised for them.”

“Nature forgot to shade him off, I think,” observed Mr. Skimpole to

Ada and me. “A little too boisterous—like the sea. A little too

vehement—like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every

colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in

him!”

I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very

highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to

many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything.

Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the

point of breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole

was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we

had been greatly pleased with him.

“He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole; “and if a child may trust

himself in such hands—which the present child is encouraged to do,

with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him—I shall go.

He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will

cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that

sort? By the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses,

Miss Summerson?”

He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,

light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.

“Oh, yes!” said I.

“Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff,” said Mr.

Skimpole. “He will never do violence to the sunshine any more.”

It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with

anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on

the sofa that night wiping his head.

“His successor informed me of it yesterday,” said Mr. Skimpole.

“His successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls

it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s birthday. I put

it to him, ‘This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a

blue-eyed daughter you wouldn’t like ME to come, uninvited, on HER

birthday?’ But he stayed.”

Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched

the piano by which he was seated.

“And he told me,” he said, playing little chords where I shall put

full stops, “The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother.

And that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular. The rising

Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.”

Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about.

Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada’s favourite songs.

Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what

was passing in his mind.

After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing

his head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the

keys and stopped Mr. Skimpole’s playing. “I don’t like this,

Skimpole,” he said thoughtfully.

Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up

surprised.

“The man was necessary,” pursued my guardian, walking backward and

forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of

the room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a

high east wind had blown it into that form. “If we make such men

necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly

knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves

upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his

children. One would like to know more about this.”

“Oh! Coavinses?” cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he

meant. “Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses’ headquarters, and

you can know what you will.”

Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.

“Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon

as another!” We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole

went with us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and

so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of

Coavinses wanting him!

He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there

was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses’ Castle.

On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy

came out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.

“Who did you want?” said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into

his chin.

“There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here,”